When Adria Richards was fired in March for speaking out against sexually inappropriate conduct by her male peers at a tech conference, I wrote the above opinion piece on it. I also wrote a column about rape culture, which appeared in the print version of the paper, and I can provide a clip if requested.

When EC decided to renew Tom Fallo’s contract and give him more money, many in the college community disagreed with the decision. This article was an attempt to shed some light on why the decision was made to keep him.

This opinion piece is part of a weekly column featured in the print version of the paper called “Up For Debate.” In it, I tackle the “no” position when asked whether or not students are properly informed on politics that affect them as students at EC.

Related stories

The U.S. Department of Education will make it a little easier for college students with gay parents to apply for financial aid. The forms, which will be introduced for the 2014-15 school year, will allow students to designate their parents as “Parent 1 (father/mother/stepparent)” and “Parent 2 (father/mother/stepparent)” instead of as mother and dather, Education secretary Arne Duncan announced Monday.

Currently, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid only collects information about students whose parents are married. Because the federal government does not recognize marriages between same-sex couples, some students with gay parents have been unable to receive financial aid equivalent to that of their peers with married, straight parents.

“All students should be able to apply for federal student aid within a system that incorporates their unique family dynamics,” Duncan said. “These changes will allow us to more precisely calculate federal student aid eligibility based on what a student’s whole family is able to contribute and ensure taxpayer dollars are better targeted toward those students who have the most need, as well as provide an inclusive form that reflects the diversity of American families.”

There is a startling new sight at the subway station at Hollywood and Vine these days, set amid the handsome trappings of vintage film projectors and movie paraphernalia: five subway turnstiles.

Their appearance amounts to an acknowledgment of the failure of the rider honor system that Los Angeles embraced when it began constructing its subway system nearly 20 years ago. This might not exactly come as a news flash to anyone who has traveled the subways of New York or the Washington Metro, but a gateless subway entrance is not the most effective way to motivate riders to pay their carriage.

Los Angeles transit officials say that millions of dollars in annual revenues have been lost because of riders who calculated, reasonably enough, that they could ride the subway free with minimal danger of detection, no matter the occasional deputy sheriff demanding to see a fare card and a $250 fine for violators.

I’m not sure why this is being considered a new development. Those turnstiles have been in place for a while now, and you can definitely walk through them without tapping your fare card.

On occasion, I’ve seen sheriff deputies in the various stations watching to see if people tap their card, and I’ve purposely not tapped mine just to see if I would be stopped; I never was.

I’ve been on the train before and had a deputy come up to scan my tap card, and I’ve had a paid fare so there wasn’t anything to worry about, but this should have happened a long time ago if they were going to consider the rail system to be a source of revenue for the city.

Harper Lee, the 87-year-old author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has filed suit against her literary agent over the rights to her classic novel. The suit alleges that the agent took advantage of Lee’s age and infirmity when she assigned the copyright to him six years ago.

In 2007, Lee was living in an assisted living facility and had recently suffered a stroke when she signed over the rights of “To Kill a Mockingbird” to her agent, Samuel Pinkus, and his agency Keystone Literary.

“Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see,” the complaint contends. “Harper Lee had no idea she had assigned her copyright” to Pinkus’ company, the suit states.

After the explosion Wilmot was taken into custody by a school resources officer and charged with possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device. She will be tried as an adult.

She was then taken to a juvenile assessment center. She was also expelled from school and will be forced to complete her diploma through an expulsion program.

CNM is temporarily suspending the operations of the CNM Chronicle pending a full evaluation of the structure and oversight of the student newspaper with hopes of being back up and running by the summer term. The Chronicle staff will be reassigned to other work-study positions during the evaluation.

CNM does not have a journalism program, which has limited the college’s ability to provide the education and training that students need to appropriately operate a newspaper that is distributed to a student body of nearly 30,000. CNM is going to re-evaluate how students can be trained, educated and supervised in operating a widely disseminated student publication.

Some issues were pulled off the racks late in the afternoon. CNM felt the content was offensive and not appropriate for the educational mission of CNM.

CNM funds the operations of the Chronicle, and as a publicly funded institution, CNM feels a responsibility to make sure public funds are being used to support the College’s educational mission.

Central New Mexico Community College shut down their student newspaper after the publication did an entire edition dedicated to sex and sexuality. An unfortunate incident that shows how a school can limit the First Amendment rights of its students.